


How Do You Tell A Girl You Want to Kiss Her?

by Charliezaard



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Charlie, Asexuality Spectrum, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charliezaard/pseuds/Charliezaard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Misadventures of two idiots who don't realize how much they really care about each other</p><p>---------</p><p>It's been weeks since Charlie and Dee "bombed at Def Poetry" as they told the gang. How long can they skirt around the fact that they have feelings for each other?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Charlie and Dee Dine Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first post on Ao3 and I'm pretty proud of this story and excited to unfold it!! Please say tuned or offer suggestions, everything is welcome~

Dennis and Mac always had their monthly outings and fancy dinners, and it wasn’t until recently that Charlie and Dee had decided that they might as well do the same. It wasn’t often that they got to go to a diner (or really anywhere that wasn’t where Dennis wanted to go) and ever since the slam poetry night, it was rare for the two to get time alone. Though they weren’t sure if they really wanted that…they had been insulting each other even more recently, throwing bird and illiteracy jokes so fast it made both their heads spin, but something between them just wouldn’t go away.

It was when they finally got seated at the diner that either of them realized the strange tension that had grown between them.

“Hey, uh…Dee?” Charlie’s voice was timid and a bit nervous; a drastic change from the loud insults and uncomfortably exaggerated laughter Dee had been forced to hear come out of him for weeks.

“Yeah, Charlie? If it’s about the beak, you still don’t have to eat it. Infinite pass on the beak.”

“haha the beaks on your face!” he ended it like a joke, but neither of them were laughing. “Right…about that. I didn’t uh, I don’t mean any of the-“

“I know Charlie. And I didn’t mean anything I said about the illiteracy stuff. Well I mean-“

“Yeah. Right, no. I am.” An uncomfortable laugh, but it was the first time Charlie had admitted it without going on to explain why it wasn’t important that he know the entire alphabet. Because it was,  _it definitely was_ , and he did not.

Before Dee could comment on it, their waitress approached the table to take their orders. Charlie took a quick drink out of his glass to swallow down the urge to spew the thoughts rising up in his mind. The quick drink turned into a quick chug which turned into him drinking the entire glass of water and setting it a bit too roughly on the table with a gasp.

“…is he okay?” the waitress seemed genuinely concerned, which made Charlie feel even shittier. Not that he would ever say that out-loud or admit it to Dee, but he could see the way he was perceived by other people and he hated it. Still a bit out of breath, Charlie sucked in surrounding air before nodding sharply.

“I’m just going to have a slice of your cherry pie.” Dee cut in to give Charlie time to exhale and not make a  _complete_  ass out of himself.

“And I will have your chicken sandwich!” he exclaimed, slamming his hand triumphantly on the table. The waitress widened her eyes a bit, but walked away without another word.

Charlie watched her for only a split second more before turning to the blond in front of him with a look of obvious confusion on his face. “Why are you just getting a pie, Dee? A main course isn’t  _that_  expensive, I’m sure we can afford it.”

“I’m just watching my weight, Charlie. It’s not a big deal, everyone does it. I’m eating less food less often to sort of trim down. I’m hoping I’ll finally get men by looking pretty instead of being mistaken for a whore.” She sounded way too excited about the whole thing for Charlie’s liking.

“But Dee, you’re pretty as shit  _now_.” He told her, his eyebrows knitted in confusion, and perhaps a little concern. No matter how many times he and the boys commented on her appearance, Dee was by far one of the prettiest girls he’d ever met. He had just been so preoccupied with the waitress for so long he never really saw it till that night a few weeks ago…

“Wh-what? Charlie, do you mean that?”

“Of course I do! Besides, who else can say they banged Lil Kev?”

“Probably a lot of people, actually.” Dee contemplated. Rappers weren’t necessarily know for celibacy, and she had always had the sinking feeling that she was just at the right place at the right time to have gotten such an opportunity.

“Oh...well, the guy was a retard anyway, so who cares.”

“God dammit, Charlie for the last time he wasn’--nevermind.” the blond sighed and brushed a hair out of her face, looking down to stare at her lap.

Charlie frowned a bit at himself, knowing he had caused some sort of distress in Dee. Granted, she was always distressed and they were always laughing about it, but right now there was no  _they_ , there was just Charlie feeling really shitty because he knew the emotion her face was covered in all too well. Inadequacy.

“Well, anyway, yeah, I think you’re pretty great. And you’re great at a lot of things, you just never get to prove yourself is all.” the young man’s hand snaked its way across the table to pat the top of Dee’s. It was a sort of sympathy that Charlie had never experienced within himself before, but Charlie wasn’t good enough with words to know that the feeling inside of him wasn’t sympathy, but rather  _empathy_  and perhaps something even greater…

Dee looked up then, staring not at Charlie but at the small, relatively dirty, hand that laid on top of her spindly, relatively clean one. As her eyes moved slowly upward to meet Charlie’s, the both of them practically threw themselves onto opposite sides of the booth. Dee could feel her bad back pressed firmly against the vinyl backing, and Charlie was rubbing his hand with how hard he had flung it against the back of his seat. Then the awkward laughter ensued and didn’t die out until the waitress arrived with their food. As she set the two plates down, Charlie stared silently at the small plate in front of Dee for a few moments before turning quickly to the waitress, who had just begun to walk away, and tapping her on the back (Dee was sure he was aiming for the shoulder, but was way too short to achieve his goal).

“Uhhhhhhhh, miss? Could you please bring another chicken sandwich to the table? And, like, an  _entire_  cherry pie?”

With a roll of her eyes the waitress walked away and the small bearded man-child turned back to Dee with a look of beaming pride, like he had just saved a kitten from being murdered...Except Dee thought he sort of looked like a kitten himself.

“I told you I’m not that hungry.” She reminded him, but her stomach betrayed her and growled loudly in protest against her words. She smiled sheepishly, watching Charlie smugly bite into his sandwich...Except maybe it wasn’t smugness at all. Dee had hung around the gang as a whole for far too long and it was hard to let herself see that Charlie wasn’t happy he was proved right, he was happy because he wanted her to be happy...that was a weird feeling.

“Y’know what, Dee.” Charlie said, his mouth filled with bread and chicken. “I think you and I make a really good team-” the blond tensed up a bit at those words, remembering them coming out of her mouth just a few weeks ago...and what they had led to. Did Charlie expect that to happen again? Did he want it to? Did  _she_? Oh god, what if he sniffed so much damn glue between then and now that he forgot it had even happened?

“Yeah, I guess we do.” She agreed, pressing a fork into her pie and taking a bite. God, it tasted fucking delicious, and Dee was secretly so glad Charlie had ordered her more of it. “I mean, we don’t tear each other down, we actually build each other  _up_.” she said, shoveling more pie into her mouth and gladly taking the extra food from the waitress when she arrived. “What about it, though?”

“Well I mean, last time-” Charlie chose the most inopportune time to shove his face full of sandwich.

 _This is it,_  Dee thought,  _he thinks I’m just going to ahead and fuck him, oh god...I knew this whole thing would shit on our friendship-_

He swallowed. “It’s just that last time, we were actually pretty damn good at Def Poetry. I know Dennis told you we would bomb, but if we had actually gone and done it instead of…” he coughed then, skipping over the one part of the night that Dee was so confident he would have lingered on...She let out a breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “If we had actually gone, I think we would have done really well.” he continued. “So maybe we should...keep hanging out? I mean, just you and me...without them. The gang. The other guys...Dennis and Ma-”

“Yeah, yeah, Charlie I get it.” Dee confirmed, biting a large chunk of her sandwich. She chewed for a few moments before simply gulping it down with a drink of water. Impressive.

“So, like...is that a yes?” the end of his sentence raised in pitch and she couldn’t help but laugh at him. Still, she nodded her head as she wiped off her mouth with a napkin. Charlie’s lips grew into a large toothy grin and he moved to take a slice of pie-

But Dee’s hand quickly slapped him away and gave him an animalistic glare. She must’ve been starving. Raising his hands in surrender, Charlie leaned back in his seat to watch her. He was strangely calm, a feeling he didn’t get to feel very often when he was at the bar or with the boys. He was always on his toes, but sadly he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, and usually couldn’t anticipate many of the things that they threw at him.

“I’ve been working on some poetry on my own,” Dee said in between bites. “Maybe after this we could go to my place and look at them? I’m sure if we both work at it, it’ll be a lot better.”

Charlie definitely loved the suggestion, but he also knew there was one hurdle that would be hard to jump if Dee wanted him to read her writing...he couldn’t. He could barely read his own words half the time, and he had this nagging feeling in the back of his mind that most of the things he wrote weren’t even real words...Still, he gave a nod of his head and began to look over his shoulder to gauge how far away the only waitress on the floor was. The opposite side, taking orders. The chef? He was preoccupied in the back.

“Uh, hey Dee?” he asked, still looking around as he called to her, clearly preoccupied. “I definitely don’t have enough money to pay for this so…”

There was a sound like shattered glass and Charlie jumped, turning ahead towards the noise...and Dee was standing, pie tray in hand, and a shattered plate from their table on the ground. He looked her in the eyes for a split second before throwing himself out of the booth and towards the front doors. By this time, the waitress had heard the crash and looked towards them, but she wasn’t fast enough to catch the two shit-bags hauling ass down the street.

But they were cute shit-bags, weren’t they?


	2. Charlie Can't Read

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Dee brings Charlie over to her place to review a few pieces of writing, she's painfully reminded that his reading and comprehension skills are incredibly low. She suggests she teach him how to read, or at least teach him the alphabet, but in the attempt to convince him to let her, the two finally snap beneath the tension that had only grown larger between them at the diner earlier that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've head-canoned Charlie as dyslexic, as he shows a lot of signs and it would also describe why learning how to read was even harder than it might have been for kids in similar family situations. So!!! Here's the second chapter, hope you like it!!

Dee unlocked the door to her apartment and immediately took off her shoes so that her bare feet touched the soft carpeted floor. Charlie had to admit that it looked pretty comfortable, and he couldn’t possibly walk barefooted in his own apartment unless he wanted some sort of disease, or multiple, and it probably felt better to be barefoot when your feet were  _dry_  and not dripping wet from Dennis running his Range Rover into a  lake…

But he couldn’t possibly. His feet smelt like shit. Charlie wasn’t that smart, and he probably took a shower about once every three months, but he still had ears and the gang never took liberties with the words they used to describe his personal stench. “like a corpse that’s been rotting for centuries and recently got shit on by about five different animals” Dennis had once told him, which brought on a large collective laugh from the gang, and a low awkward chuckle from Charlie. He had never cared what other people thought of him, he accepted his role as the smelly stupid wildcard, without question and just continued to live his life without a second thought, but for some stupid reason, Charlie had recently been feeling the need to impress Dee. He had done  _laundry_  the other day. Charlie had never done laundry in his life, he just waited for all of his clothes to smell terrible (even to him) and went over to his mom’s, but when Dee suggested a week ago that they should have a monthly dinner, he had gone down to the laundromat with his army jacket, blue jeans, and some shirt with only about three words he actually knew. He screwed up royally of course, and shrunk his shirt by about two sizes, and forgot cleaning underwear should have been part of the ordeal. He had ended up going to the bathroom, taking off his underwear, and washing just that pair. It was a mess and if anybody in the gang, even Dee ( _especially_  Dee), ever found out, the little guy would be hearing about it for weeks.

“Charlie?” Dee’s voice was farther away now, and Charlie realized he was still standing in the doorway while Dee had headed to her kitchen around the corner.

Quickly, he shut the door behind him and scurried down the short corridor to the main room. A quick survey of the small apartment let Charlie know that they were the only ones home, and a wave of relief flowed over him. It might’ve occurred to him that Dennis and Mac had no idea that anything had ever happened between the two people currently in the apartment, and would find nothing strange or suspicious about them hanging out alone (as they did it pretty often), but he wasn’t really the kind of guy who  _oozed_  common sense.

Dee immediately popped open two beers and set another pair on the counter, knowing full well they would speed through the bottles. Charlie stood on the opposite side of the counter and watched her for a bit too long, causing her to quirk an eyebrow at the man, and for him to blush beneath his beard.

Charlie cleared his throat and Dee disappeared into her room to emerge with a small spiral chock full of notes and random scraps of paper. Both of them sat slowly and awkwardly on the couch, sitting rigid and cautious of the other... It wasn’t until Dee pried open the notebook that the strangling silence finally dissipated. Charlie stretched his neck to try and peer at the words that littered the page, but he could only catch bits and pieces of certain words and even then he wasn’t confident that he was reading them correctly. A few seconds skidded by before Dee handed Charlie the spiral for him to read through.

“I know it’s not that great, but I’ve been working on it for a while. I thought it would be a really good one to perform at a slam, but I guess it could work as a song...what do you think, Charlie?” she sounded genuinely concerned about what his response might be, and that filled the small illiterate man with a strange sense of pride and self-worth. There was only one thing wrong with that sentence. Illiterate. Charlie couldn’t even read a full sentence of this thing. Was that “You hold him like a dog”? or like a God? Both could have some sort of deeper meaning in the world of poetry. Did the place she was describing smell like piss? or bliss? Even with the small part of the alphabet, Charlie  _did_  know he could never manage to read a single sentence with 100% clarity or confidence.

He stared at it silently for a while, scrunching his face in different directions and squinting at the bright white paper like somehow that would make the words dance around until they were in a format he could understand. Why the fuck could Dee not translate these into pictographs or something? Charlie could feel himself getting frustrated, clenching the sides of the notebook until the paper crumpled beneath his fingers and crushing his teeth together until even Dee could hear the sound of them grinding against each other. In the next moment, Dee maneuvered the spiral out of his hands, watching him go from extremely pissed off to incredibly embarrassed. Charlie’s small body went slack, falling back against the couch and sighing.

“I can’t read any of that.” He admitted. He had thought about apologizing, but he had never been one for doing that, no matter the circumstance, and he was already changing the way he acted around Dee. He couldn’t just change completely, she might get the wrong idea...but what was the  _right_  idea?

“Oh shit, Charlie I’m sorry. I forgot.” But of course, she hadn’t. Maybe she forgot how bad it really was, but she was a Reynolds, and no matter which way you looked, the Reynolds family was manipulative. This time, at least, it was the  _good_  kind of manipulative. There might be a nicer word for it, but Dee wasn’t very well acquainted with “good” words. She had hoped that if Charlie was faced with something that actually interested him, he would be a bit more determined to figure out the workings (or “coding”) of the words on the page. That, of course, hadn’t worked at all, and her friend almost practically blew up. She hadn’t had any idea how bad Charlie’s knowledge really was, and despite constantly steeling herself to not feel guilt or shame, the young woman managed to feel both simultaneously.

“You know, I think it would be really good if you actually learned how to read.” she suggested, leaning towards him ever so slightly and raising her eyebrows. She thought it was an amazing idea, and her body language, body turned towards straight towards him now and face subtly suggesting that he say yes, didn’t even attempt to hide it. Still, it took Charlie less than a second to furiously shake his head and groan.

“I don’t want to learn how to read. I’ve gotten this far without it. Besides, I have my own system, Dee.”

“Right, but you’re the only one who knows what the hell you’re saying.”

“Well nobody really cares about anything I write about anyway.”

“What? Charlie, we did an entire fucking play that you wrote.”

He went silent and glanced down at his feet, and for a second Dee thought she had won. “Right, but you rewrote half of it anyway, sooo….”

Oh. Yeah. Damn, the gang had been awful to Charlie more time than she had ever really realized; she was always so wrapped up in the shit they were doing to  _her_. She had already apologized to him today, though, surely she didn’t have to do it every time he brought up one of her mistakes?

“It’s not that hard to learn the alphabet, Charlie. There's a song and everything. You’re good with songs!”

“Songs I write.”

“This song doesn’t even have words.” she prodded.

He said nothing and quietly crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. God, what a child. Gently, Dee placed her hand on his shoulder, breaking the invisible barrier the two had set up between each other ever since entering her apartment. She squeezed lightly, finally making him look up from the carpet and lock his eyes with her’s...They sat there for a few moments, silent. Staring. Charlie slowly leaned forward, his eyes fluttering shut, his forehead meeting Dee’s…

And then his face fell straight into the crevice of the couch cushions. It was softer than the ground, but considerably rougher than what he had  _intended_  to lean into. Was this what rejection felt like then? There was a strange feeling of sadness mixed with a small twinge of resentment stirring inside of the man’s chest, and he wondered if this was why Dennis always acted so crazy when this sort of thing was constantly happening to him.

Charlie pushed himself back up to a sitting position and saw Dee standing about a foot away, and just...just _staring_  at him. She looked frightened. Like Dee, though, Charlie only knew the negative word for the emotion he saw on her face. It never occurred to him that it was just surprise, which isn’t always a bad thing, necessarily. He scratched the back of his head, looking anywhere but at his friend, who he had just tried to kiss.  _Again._

“Sorry.” they both said it in unison, and their eyes snapped back to one another like rubber bands, eyes wide and bodies stiff. What did the other have to be sorry about?  _It’s my fault, don’t be sorry. I shouldn’t have done that._  It was running through both of their minds, and it only added to the confusion that was swirling around them lately.

“Charlie, at least let me _try_  to teach you to read, alright? Read real words with real letters.”

She switched back to the subject so fast, Charlie had to blink to get back on track with the conversation. If he hadn’t been so disoriented, the idiot probably wouldn’t have given her a stupid short nod of agreement, but he honestly couldn’t think of anything else to do and didn’t want to add yet another awkward silence to their already pretty high score.

The second that his head bobbed up and down in a short, curt nod, Dee took a deep breath and stared straight at Charlie. He glanced around, trying to focus on something else, but couldn’t help glancing back at Dee every damn time.

A second passed.

Then it was Dee’s turn to nod. A short one, of determination. In that same second, the blond lunged forward, practically pouncing on Charlie, straddling him with a leg on either side of his lap, and pressed her lips forcefully to his. They grappled with each other for a while, messy and wild and a bit sweaty. Charlie’s bearded scuffed at Dee’s skin and her hands grasped at his greasy hair. Dee had realized the first time they kissed, and it was confirmed now, that despite all the smells and grime that had layered on to her friend over the years, his mouth and tongue tasted strangely clean. Dee would even go so far as to say it tasted nice, and so although it surprised her a bit, she didn’t complain when Charlie’s tongue slipped into her mouth and started battling it out with her’s.

 


	3. Charlie Counts to Q

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee finally convinces Charlie to try and learn how to read, but when Mac gets involved to try and stop it, Dee's motivation only becomes stronger.

Charlie sat in his apartment now, alone for the most part. Frank sat beside him, eyes wide open, but the young man knew he was out cold, and it gave him time to think about what had happened last night…  
Nothing had happened, at least not the things Dee always talked about. They didn’t have sex, the thought of which made Charlie flinch a bit, but they were all over each other for what felt like hours. It all happened in a flash, and Charlie started sweating a lot faster than he would like to admit. It all felt so raw and foreign to him because for the first time he wasn’t doing this with some other sort of purpose in mind, there was no hidden agenda to fuck Dee over he just...he just wanted to kiss her. And that scared the shit out of him. The last person he ever liked this way hated his fucking guts and rejected him a countless number of times. He hadn’t even realized this or come to terms with this until a few weeks ago, and it was very possible that the same kind of signals were resonating off Dee and he was too stupid to see them. He was living in a small apartment with a man who was more or less a rich troll, and although that was fine by him, Charlie knew Dee well enough to know she wouldn’t settle for a trash heap if she had a chance at a mansion. Or even just a regular fucking house.  
Charlie let out a loud groan and rubbed his scruffy face with his calloused hands. Feeling the two rough surfaces scratch against each other helped him focus a bit more on something else than his stupid and confusing emotions. With a quick jolt of energy, he threw himself off of the couch and towards the door, not staying to watch Frank wake up with a fright, and not replying when he asked “where the hell are you goin’ Chawlie?” because he didn’t really know the answer.  
Fuck fuck fuck  _fuck._  Out of all the places he could have gone, Charlie should not have gone to Dee’s. He hadn’t thought about it, he never thought about these sorts of things, he just went where his mind felt like going, but when Dee opened the door and stared at him with those eyes...he realized maybe it was a mistake. Her eyebrows raised and her eyes grew wide but she quickly covered up the surprise with a smile. Charlie didn’t like knowing that it was a cover-up. He missed the days when he was stupid enough to think that everything he saw and heard was exactly what people meant. He still had low intelligence, still got lost in his own world and missed many if not all social cues, but Charlie had lost a large part of his ignorance. So he didn’t bother to tell Dee why he was there, or walk inside her apartment. Instead, he simply turned on his heel and began to walk back down the hall towards the elevator.  
“Charlie! Wait!” she sounded frantic, and it made him stop dead in his tracks, staring at the dirty tops of his shoes. “Don’t be such an ass, you’ll be glad you learned how.”  
What? Oh. Oh. Right. Dee was used to one night stands, and, hell they hadn’t even penetrated any...holes...so this must’ve been easy for her to cast aside. This was strictly professional (well, as professional as two idiots who have never taught anyone anything in their life can be). The fact that Charlie wasn’t very keen on this whole idea was a whole other problem. This was all just one big bad idea, he shouldn’t have shown up at all.  
A loud, obviously exaggerated, sigh left Dee’s mouth as she placed a hand on her hip and stared daggers through Charlie’s back so hard he that he could feel his face heating up despite facing away from her. “If you do this with me, we can get shit faced afterwards.”  
That turned him around. He sped right past her and onto her couch, sinking into the cushions and looking up at her with a whole new goal in mind. Getting drunk off his ass was sure to get rid of all this shit swirling around in his head, and it being at no cost to him was a major bonus. Charlie hadn’t really thought about the fact that he could’ve left right then and gone to Paddy’s to get just as drunk with just as free beer, but the chances of that occurring to him any time soon was extremely low.  
“Right…” Dee trailed off quickly, walking to her fridge to grab a single beer. She hadn’t really thought past the first step of coercion. Actually teaching Charlie how to read and write was going to be a lot harder than baiting him with beer. Twisting off the cap of the cold bottle, Dee walked back to Charlie but didn’t sit next to him. Instead, she stood a few feet away from the couch, staring down at him and biting her bottom lip in thought.  
It made Charlie sweat 1) because he didn’t know what she was thinking and 2) she looked beautiful standing there. He didn’t like that she was and he didn’t like that he thought that and he didn’t like a single thing about this situation. Hanging out with Dee had stopped being fun ever since that first kiss, and had instead become a strange and awkward dance between the two as they tried not to step on each other’s toes or get too close...It was all about stratagem and overanalyzing now, and Charlie had never been good at either of those things.  
“So do you, like...do you know the alphabet song?” that was a ridiculous question. Of course he didn’t. Charlie didn’t even know the whole alphabet. But he was great with songs, so that was a good place to start...She hoped. “Well, there’s a song for it, and it won’t really help you spell but it’ll help you know what you have to work with.” she took a sip of the beer and Charlie frowned, obviously having thought that it was for him. She glared down at him swiftly. “I told you after.” she snipped. “Now. The Alphabet Song.”

  
\---

Mac burst through the door of Dee’s apartment and let out a loud yell before punching the wall. Of course, the wall did more damage to him than he did to it and he quickly recoiled, sticking his hands in his pockets and ignoring the throbbing pain; getting angrier by the second. He turned past the entrance hall and into the living room, knit his eyebrows together, a frown still plastered on his face.  
The loud bang made Charlie stop mid-song, and having gotten to “Q” without forgetting a letter, Dee was very pissed at whatever had interrupted his process. When Mac came veering around the corner, she had to remember that he didn’t suspect a single thing between her and Charlie. Charlie, however, stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Mac like a deer in headlights, catching his breath in his chest and not moving an inch.  
“...Whatr’ya doin’?” Mac asked with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. The scene he walked in on was Charlie singing (or rather stuttering out) the alphabet while Dee watched and sipped a beer. “Is this...some of that def poetry shit again?” Jesus, he thought they all agreed to give up on all that crap.  
“If you really wanna know, I’m finally teaching Charlie how to read.” Dee snarled, making to turn back to Charlie and ignore the commotion that Mac was making.  
“What? But he already knows how.”  
“He doesn’t even know the alphabet, Mac. He thought a door marked Private said Pirate for God’s sake.”  
It was then that Mac grabbed Dee by the shoulders and practically dragged her into her bedroom, closing the partition between that separated it from the living room.  
“What the hell are you doing?” she snarled, pulling herself away from him and snarling as menacingly as she could manage.  
“Dee. You don’t understand how useful it is that Charlie’s such a dumbass. If Charlie learns how to read, we won’t be able to do any of the things we do to him anymore.”  
“You guys manipulate him to get more money out of the bar, and I don’t have any shares in the bar anyway, why would I help you? You guys treat us both like shit.” Dee placed her hands on her hips and gave Mac a knowing look. “You know that if Charlie could actually read or write, he’d stop signing all those bogus contracts you lie to him about. But who gives a shit, Mac, he’s probably still stupid enough to sell his shares for sandwiches whenever he gets hungry.”  
Mac threw his hands in the air, exasperated. Obviously, Dee wasn’t getting it. If Charlie learned how to read, he could easily surpass Mac on the rating scale of Paddy’s Pub. Mac wouldn’t stand to be worth less than some dirty man-child, but even he knew their intelligence ratings wouldn’t be much different if Charlie was more educated. After that, all he would have going for him would be his brute strength and charm.  
“You take advantage of Charlie just as often as we do! If you teach him to read he’s just going to get all pretentious again like he did when he took those pills.”  
“Those pills were a placebo, Mac, Charlie was still an idiot. And even if he knows how to read, he’s still going to be an idiot.” There was a strange feeling in her gut after saying that, like...guilt, maybe? Dee wasn’t entirely sure, considering it wasn’t a feeling that she felt very often, but it made her want to gag and that was an action she had to very quickly swallow. The woman lurched forward and swallowed the lump in her throat, looking a bit like a convulsion, which only annoyed Mac. She was always such an inconvenience.  
“Besides, I already taught Charlie how to write the things he needs to know.”  
“Mac, he spells his name C-A-T.”  
This made the man break out in loud and uncontrollable laughter. It took a few moments before he could catch his breath and continue to speak. “Yeah, I taught him that. It’s fucking hilarious, he has no idea. You’d think he’d be able to sound it out but-”  
“He trusts you assholes, that’s the only reason you’re able to lead him on about all this shit.” Dee snapped, baring her teeth at Mac, filled with more annoyance than she thought she was capable to feel on Charlie’s behalf. “I’m going unlearn all that stupid crap you and Dennis taught him and then Charlie’s going to kick your ass. Mentally.”  
With that, Dee slid open the doors to the living room to see Charlie had stolen her beer and chugged the rest of it. He was now on the second one that she had kept from him, and it was spilling from the sides of his mouth. Dee’s face twisted in disgust, and Mac simply gave her a knowing look.  
“Charlie is unchangeable, Dee. We love him as the stupid idiot that he is.” Then the chubby asshole walked over to Charlie, patted him on the head like he was some sort of dog, and headed out of the apartment. The worst part, Dee decided, was that Charlie seemed almost proud of Mac’s words. At the closing of the door, Charlie let out a loud burp and stood up.  
“I don’t really think this is going anywhere so I’m just gonna…” he fell silent and gestured towards the door, awkwardly sliding his feet towards the exit like if he moved too fast, Dee would pounce on him.  
Had she just gotten defeated by Mac? There was no way that could have just happened. They had been doing so well! Charlie was had gotten almost all the way through the entire alphabet without messing up.  
“Charlie, wait.” Her voice stopped him in his tracks but he refused to make eye contact, instead looking at anything else in the apartment that wasn't her, trying to distract himself by counting the number of stains he found. This was her last-ditch effort to get him to stay, and she wasn’t even really sure what was about to come out of her mouth, just that it needed to be good enough to convince an easily impressionable Charlie Kelly that Mac, his best friend since childhood, was a stupid idiot asshole.  
“Charlie...Mac...Mac, is a stupid idiot asshole.”  
Well. It was concise.  
“Just stay here and learn the damn alphabet so we can show those jerks what’s what, and that you aren’t some stupid man baby.”  
A few seconds passed before the man glanced up and locked eyes with her. He looked confused, which didn’t surprise Dee much, but there was also a tint of...pain, in his eyes that unsettled her and forced her to look away and rub the back of her neck.  
“Okay. I guess. Just promise you won’t make this all about shoving it to Mac.”  
Dee merely smiled and fluttered into the kitchen to grab two more beers and a small notebook. She didn’t say another word, and definitely promise anything. It’d be better anyway, she decided, if this was about shoving it to Mac instead of actually caring about Charlie’s well-being. Who had time for that kind of emotional involvement? Neither of them, that’s for sure.


End file.
